Wednesday, 28 June 2017

A Muslim man in the Philippines has been hailed as a hero for giving shelter to 64 Christians in his home while terrorists were hunting them.

Noor Lucman, a Muslim who lives in Marawi, gave shelter to Christians who were working near his home as militants were attacking Marawi, the capital city of about 200,000 people on the Philippine island of Mindanao.

Nearly 240 Christians had been kidnapped and held hostage by militants since the start of the conflict more than a week ago.

After Lucman said after he had fled the city, Christians “couldn’t leave the city, so I had to take responsibility in protecting them.”

Monday, 26 June 2017

Two years ago, Eqbal Dauqan was going to work in the morning as usual. She's a biochemistry professor. And was driving on the freeway, when suddenly: "I felt something hit my car, but I didn't know what it was because I was driving very fast," she says.

Dauqan reached the parking lot. Got out of the car and looked at the door. What she saw left her speechless.

"A bullet hit the car, just on the door," she says.

The door had stopped the bullet. And Dauqan was OK. She has no idea where the bullet came from. But it turned out to be an ominous sign of what was to come.

Gender Canyon

Dauqan is a woman scientist in what's possibly the hardest place on Earth to be just a woman: Yemen.

The World Economic ForumranksYemen as the worst country for women's rights. In Yemen, many women can't leave the house without permission from a male relative.

"If she goes out with her husband or brother, that's OK. But not by herself. " Dauqan says. "Not everyone follows this. But this is our culture."

A culture where two-thirds of women can't read. About half are married by age 18—and sometimes as young as age 8.

And then there's the black veil. Many women in Yemen wear a niqab — a black veil that completely covers their faces, fromexcept for a tiny slit across the eyes.

Daquan wears a niqab when she's in Yemen. She even wore one during herTEDx talkthere back in 2014. But she doesn't wear one in other countries.

She may respect it—but not blindly. For the past decade, Dauqan has burst through glass ceiling after glass ceiling with fearlessness and grace.

Even as a young girl, she was rebel. "I was a little naughty," she says with a snicker.

She liked breaking rules. And proving people wrong. So when her parents told her she might not have the smarts to go into science and engineering — like her dad — Eqbal thought: Watch me.

"I told my father, 'I've heard a lot about scientists in chemistry. What is the difference between me and them? So I want to try," she says.

And she did more than try. She crushed it.

Eqbal won over her father and got his financial support. She was the first among her friends to finish college.Then she got a scholarship to do her Ph.D. in biochemistry at the Universiti Kebansaan Malaysia, where she studied the nutritional properties of palm oil.

That lead to her writing a popularbookabout the fruits mentioned in the Holy Quran and their health benefits. For example, Indian Jujube — also known as red dates — are the most cultivated plant in the world and have 20 times more vitamin C than citrus fruit, Eqbal writes in her book.

Tuesday, 20 June 2017

In America, they call it the Day Three Story. After a mass shooting, depending on whether the suspect is young or old, white, Asian or black, Muslim or Christian, the press speculates on his motives (and yes, it is almost always a "he"). And then on Day Three, when attention has wandered elsewhere, when he's been deemed a "lone wolf" (white) or a "dangerous radical who hates our way of life" (Muslim), another piece of the jigsaw emerges. He has a history of domestic violence.

Who are the most likely victims of an American mass shooter, by the way? Would you care to take a guess? It's overwhelminglylikely to behis family. (Of mass killers between 2009 and 2015, 16 per cent had previously been charged with domestic violence. More than half included a partner or close family member in their death toll.) We also know that the time a woman is most in danger from our violent partner is when she tries to leave - when he feels worried that his control is slipping away.

These incidents are not often described as terrorism, despite a concerted attempt from women's groups to draw out the parallels with other mass killers. One of the most moving statements I've read this year was by the sons of Lance Hart, who killed his wife Claire, along with their daughter Charlotte, after she finally announced she would leave him.On Facebook, Luke Hart wrote:

"It was the result of decades of abuse and controlling and intimidating behaviour. He was a tyrant who wouldn’t let his family live outside of his domination. Our father was a terrorist living within our own home; he had no cause but to frighten his family and to generate his own esteem from trampling and bullying us. For over a decade we had tried to leave on numerous occasions but he manipulated and threatened on every occasion."

Lance Hart killed himself after shooting his wife and daughter - something which is typical in "family annilihation" cases.

Monday, 19 June 2017

When Tim Winter became a Muslim in 1979, Islam was still something of a mystery to the West. He was a 19-year-old undergraduate student at Cambridge University and a self-described “freelance monotheist.”

Today, Winter, a 57-year-old native Londoner who also goes by the name Shaykh Abdal Hakim Murad, faces a much different reality. Islam has grown to one of the largest religionsin Europe, and with it,Islamophobia.

Winter, keenly aware of this new reality, is tackling it head-on. As one of Europe’s most prominent Islamic scholars and dean of theCambridge Muslim College, he spends his days training graduates of Britain’s top Islamic seminaries to better navigate and engage with British society.

Both Englishman and Muslim convert, Winter is uniquely positioned to bridge the gap between Islam and the West, largely because of the journey that got him here.

The late 70s were a time of religious experimentation for many British youth, and Winter was no different. He had a strong desire to understand the nature of God and humanity, and so he found himself immersed in a study of the world’s religions.

He turned to “the Far East,” then Judaism in search of something that “aimed ultimately to embrace the world.” These traditions fell short, and his own faith at the time, Christianity, had already proven flawed in his mind in part because his “school chaplain failed … to explain to our sneering, skeptical young minds the basic teachings of Christianity, the incarnation and the Trinity, the blood atonement … None of it made any sense, and [the chaplain] admitted that it was something that should just be accepted on faith and didn’t have any biblical or rational basis.

Friday, 9 June 2017

So, this guy, he goes by the nameMohsin Akramunleashed the barbaric animal inside him to deal with his poor wife who just did not prepare dinner for him. He said that he wanted to teach her“how to be a good wife”. He’s 21 and before incurring his wrath on her reportedly told her,“you’ve had your chance to be a good wife,”reported prosecutor Stephen Donoghue. Afterward, he subjected her to a 10-minute attack. Not to forget, Mohsin was drunk and they were at their home in Cardiff.

The couplemet on Facebook in August 2013and Mohsin got married to the girl since he wanted a visa to the UK. He would not allow his wife a cell phone with access to the Internet. It was also reported that during the night he attacked his wife, Mohsin returned home fully drunk. He lost his temper after finding out that his wife didn’t cook dinner for him. Their four-month-old baby was present during the scene when the father beat the mother. She managed to flee the scene somehow after getting maimed and abused.

His wife, Mrs. Hussain, reportedly begged a group of girls out on the street to help her. One of the girls mentioned:“Even though it was night-time, we stood underneath an outdoor light and could clearly see she had cuts and a bruise on the side of her hand.”Mohsin is now jailed for 15 months after pleading guilty but is not going to be deported back to Pakistan, unfortunately.

Thursday, 8 June 2017

Any Muslim politician seeking to rise up the ranks of the Conservative Party has a choice. He or she can emulate Sajid Javid, one of five sons of a Pakistani bus driver who came to Britain in 1961 with one pound in his pocket.

Though brought up a Muslim, Sajid Javid never campaigned on Muslim issues, or even noticed them. He is now a cabinet minister.

Or he or she could emulate Sayeeda Warsi, a taxi driver's daughter who resigned from the David Cameron government over British policy on the Gaza invasion in 2014.

Baroness Warsi has always celebrated her Muslim identity and Pakistani heritage. Her new book, The Enemy Within, shows that she has had to pay a price.

Throughout her political career, which is now finished, she has been subject to abuse on a scale few modern politicians have to cope with.

The Tory Party took her in but refused to fully accept her. The influential ConservativeHome website published an article by Fox News commentator Niles Gardner which argued that her appointment sent "the wrong signal at a time when Britain is fighting a global war against Islamic terrorism".

Senior commentators, like Charles Moore and Tim Montgomerie, sneered at Warsi. She was never trusted. She tells how, when she was appointed Foreign Office minister, the Conservative Central Office tried to hire her special adviser to spy on her, reporting back on who she met and what she said.

Her character, actions and beliefs were repeatedly miscontructed, as Idemonstrated last weekwhen I exposed how reviewers such as Col Richard Kemp and Douglas Murray distorted and misrepresented what she had written in order to attack her.

Warsi eventually resigned at the height of the Israeli attack on Gaza in 2014. It was her job to defend British government policy in the House of Lords, and she found she could not support a government that refused to condemn Israeli military action. She has now left politics.

She says she might not have resigned if William Hague was still foreign secretary, and that she found Philip Hammond, foreign secretary at the time of Warsi's resignation (and whom she refers to as a "perfectly competent accountant") unsympathetic. Hers was the most distinguished resignation since Robin Cook over Iraq in 2003.

I think it is a terrible loss because Warsi devoted her 10-year career in frontline politics to arguing that you could be Conservative AND Muslim.

Her powerful Conservative opponents maintained that you could only be Conservative OR Muslim. They won. Hence the infamous 2016 London election campaign when Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith targeted Labour’s Sadiq Khan on the basis that the latter was Muslim, a strategy heavily criticised by Warsi.

Wednesday, 7 June 2017

Salman Abedi, the suicide bomber who killed 22 people at a Manchester pop concert this week, started life advantageously enough: to parents who had fled Gadhafi’s Libya for a new life in Britain. But actually it was that kind of dislocation that would send him off kilter two decades later, says Olivier Roy, one of France’s top experts on Islamic terrorism.
“An estimated 60 percent of those who espouse violent jihadism in Europe are second-generation Muslims who have lost their connection with their country of origin and have failed to integrate into Western societies,” Roy says.

They are subject to a “process of deculturation” that leaves them ignorant of and detached from both the European society and the one of their origins. The result, Roy argues, is a dangerous “identity vacuum” in which “violent extremism thrives.”
Born in Britain in 1994, Abedi would later be drawn to violent fundamentalism after a life in limbo. On the one hand, he tried to reconnect with Libya, where he traveled shortly before this week’s attack, while on the other, he strove to emulate the same British young people he killed.
“Unlike second generations like Abedi’s, third generations are normally better integrated in the West and don’t account for more than 15 percent of homegrown jihadis,” Roy says. “Converts, who also have an approach to Islam decontextualized from any culture, account for about 25 percent of those who fall prey to violent fundamentalism.”

With little if any understanding of religion or Islamic culture, young people like Abedi turn to terrorism out of a “suicidal instinct” and “a fascination for death,” Roy says. This key element is exemplified by the jihadi slogan first coined by Osama bin Laden: "We love death like you love life.”

“The large majority of Al-Qaida and Islamic State jihadis, including the Manchester attacker Abedi, commit suicide attacks not because it makes sense strategically from a military perspective or because it’s consistent with the Salafi creed,” Roy says. “These attacks don’t weaken the enemy significantly, and Islam condemns self-immolation as interference with God’s will. These kids seek death as an end-goal in itself.”read more:

More than 130 imams and Muslim religious leaders have said they will refuse to say funeral prayers for the perpetrators of Saturday’s attack in London.

In a highly unusual move, Muslim religious figures from across the country and from different schools ofIslamsaid their pain at the suffering of the victims and their families led them to refuse to perform the traditional Islamic prayer – a ritual normally performed for every Muslim regardless of their actions. They called on others to do the same.

They expressed “shock and utter disgust at these cold-blooded murders”, adding: “We will not perform the traditional Islamic funeral prayer over the perpetrators and we also urge fellow imams and religious authorities to withdraw such a privilege. This is because such indefensible actions are completely at odds with the lofty teachings of Islam.”

Their move came as senior Muslims and community leaders said they would redouble efforts to root out extremism in their communities afterthe attack in Londonon Saturday.

The Metropolitan police commander for engagement, Mak Chishty, the highest-ranking officer of Muslim faith, called for “a step-change – a different direction and a different movement to counter the scourge of terrorism, extremism and hatred that we have in our communities at present”.

In a statement he read out on behalf of Muslim communities, Chishty said: “It is the Islamic duty of every Muslim to be loyal to the country in which they live. We are now asking questions to understand how extremism and hatred has taken hold within some elements of our own communities.”

Thursday, 1 June 2017

US police have identified the two men killed by a white supremacist on a train in Portland as they attempted to defend passengers the suspect was bullying.

On Friday,Jeremy Joseph Christian - a 35-year-old who was known to authorities - stabbed to death 53-year-old Ricky John Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai Meche, 23, after they stepped in to defend two girls Christian was bullying.

At least one of the girls was wearing a headscarf and is believed to be Muslim.

Christian is reported to have shouted Islamophobic slurs at the girls, as well as other hate speech.

Police said on Saturday that Best died at the scene and that Meche succumbed to his wounds at a hospital after Christian slit their throats.

A third victim, 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher, was also stabbed in the attack and is in serious condition at a hospital in Portland, Oregon. Police say his injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

'Heroes'

The attack happened on the first day of Ramadan, the holiest time of the year for Muslims, and sent shockwaves through a city that prides itself on its tolerance and liberal views.

Meche's mother, Asha Deliverance of Ashland, Oregon, confirmed on Facebook that her son had been killed.

"He was a hero and will remain a hero on the other side of the veil. Shining bright star I love you forever," she wrote.

Dyjuana Hudson, a mother of one of the girls, told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the man began a racial tirade as soon as he spotted the girls. Her daughter is African-American and was with a friend who was wearing a hijab, she said.

"He was saying that Muslims should die," Hudson said. "That they've been killing Christians for years."

According to The Portland Mercury, Christian was a "known local white supremacist", while his Facebook posts were reportedly replete with far-right themes.

In April, local reporter Mike Bivins filmed Christian at a march by the far right.

In the footage, Christian is draped in an American Revolutionary War flag and can be seen performing a Nazi salute and heard shouting "Die Muslims. Die fake Christians. Die Jews", as police watch on.